September 21, 2018

The holy union

A bit hessitant to write this post as I haven't kept up with news lately. Although not sure if I do need to know every detail of latest Brexit plan. Dearest EU will reject the plan nevertheless. Why, you may ask? Well, you see there are two types of nay sayers at the moment.

There are the ones that are in deinal. They are the one who keep hoping a second referendum will give them a different result. Although they never tell the reason they think it will be different the second time. Have the concerns that made people vote for Brexit changed? Do they even know what those concerns were? Or, are they thinking that a better marketing strategy this time around will help people overcome their concern? Or, do they simply want to keep having referendums till they are happy with the results? Not sure that's how democracy works.

And then there are the ones that are angry. They are the one who keep wanting to make an example of Britain for wanting to exit. They simply can not take it that any country would want to leave this holiest of the union! Sometimes, I think the next words from them would be sacrilege and balspemy or something similar. Seriously! Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought EU is a consortium, for lack of a better word, created for mutual economic benefits of its member. The membership is entirely voluntarily. After all at end of the day, its a trade deal. So why is it this big an issue if one of the member wants to leave? They simply can't seem to comprehend the fact that a member would want to leave. In their anger, there is also a sense of fear - if one of the member leave, others may want to leave as well. But instead of working on the cause why a member would want to leave such a lovely, holy, or whatever you want to call it, European Union, they want to address this by invoking fear in the members the fear of consequence of leaving, much like a mafia - you can join but you can't leave *Muwahahaha* (couldn't resist the evil laughter). If EU is such an amazing thing, why are they scared that others may want to leave? Or, why Britain voted to leave? But guess that's not the question for them to consider. Instead of addressing the cause, they want to eliminate the symptoms - by fear. So much for democracy and democratic processes. Honestly, if they really believed in the EU, they will make it hard to rejoin the EU and not hard to leave. Just saying.

In either case, whether they are denial or angry or scared - the result will be same. They will not accept any Brexit plan presented to them. Unless they accept that Brexit happened, that people of UK voted to leave EU, it will be hard for them to accept any Brexit plan.

Well, some of them may actually have legitmate concerns too but the language used by most of them indicates otherwise. Wish they pass through their denials and angers soon because this impacts millions of lifes. Finding something mutually beneficial will be the best way forward...yet again, just saying.

P.S.: If I had been in EU place, I would have spent last two years improving the union so that Britain do regret leaving EU but not because of fear but due to admiration - further ensuring no one else would dream of leaving. But that's me.

September 1, 2018

A bit of maths...

To the kid who got stumped at 12 x 13 question this morning (and all other bright ones out there):

For 12 multiplication such as 12 x13:

 Multiply 2 x 3 = 6 . This will be unit digit.
 Next add 2 and 3  = 5. This will be tens digit.
 Next multiply 1 x 1 = 1. This will be hunderth digit.

So the answer will be 156.


It becomes slightly more complication when we reach 15 and greater numbers, i.e., 12 x 15. Again:

 Multiply 2 x 5 = 10. So '0' will be unit digit and '1' will be carried over to tens place.
 Add 2 and 5  =7. Now add carried over 1 in this total. So we essentially add 2, 5, and 1 (which was carried over in last step) = 8. This will be tens digit.
 Next multiply 1 x 1 = 1. This will be hundreth digit.

So the answer will be 180 and so on.
(BTW, I like to think of multiplication of 15 by an even number like 12 as multiplication of 30 instead so 15 x 12 = 15 x 2 x 6 = 30 x 6 = 180. Much easier to deal with! :) )

We again run into trouble at 17, ie, 12 x 17:

 Multiply 2 x 7 = 14. So 4 will be unit digit and 1 will be carried over.
 Add 2, 7 and 1 = 10. So 0 will be hundreth digit while 1 will be carried over to next step.
 Multiply 1 x1 and add 1 carried over from last step = 2. This will be hundreth digit.

So the answer will be 204.

Or, you can learn the 12 multiplication table.

P.S.: Fairly sure there must be something about this in vedic maths or some other algorithm. I just figured this one out on the ride home. I was utterly bored. So thanks for giving me something to think about.